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The Death of WCW Audiobook Now Available~!

Today ended up being a great day. Was it a great day because I finally broke down and ordered the authentic scale ring and classic blue steel cage sets I’ve been wanting for a year? No, although I did do that and I ordered a Monday Nitro ring skirt and ring mat and some Black Ring Ropes to go with it.
Was it a great day because my pre-order of ‘Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates’ hit iTunes complete with audio description track? Well, I haven’t watched the movie yet but even if I like it a bunch I don’t think that’s going to be enough to make today a great day.
Was it a good day because of the dinner I had? I had franks and beans and chocolate ice cream. I enjoy both of those things but not so much that they can make a day great. What about the fact I made my way through most of season 7 and season 8 of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ in glorious surround sound thanks to the sound bar I bought for my living room TV recently? Well, that was fun enough and I did have some laughs but there was also a time when I was a little bored, so we’ll say no.

Of course, reading the title of this post is all you needed to do to know it wasn’t going to be any of the above that made today a great one. Today is a great day because ‘The Death of WCW’ finally hit Audible.com as an audiobook.

If you don’t know, I am visually impaired although the mention of an audio description track above might have been a good clue. I am also a wrestling fan for 28 years as of early next month. When I first got my iPhone 4S in 2012, I bought ‘The Death of WCW’ from the iBook store and listened to it on my phone using voice over. It was an enjoyable enough experience, I did it with more books after that but I don’t really like reading books that way. There’s no inflection and as good as those voices may be, I’d still rather have an actual person reading it to me.

When the Tenth Anniversary Edition came out in 2014 I was hoping for an Audiobook. If you’re not a regular listener or subscriber to F4WOnline.com/WrestlingObserver.com, back then, one of the book’s Co-author’s and narrator of the audiobook, Bryan Alvarez was campaigning for a hardcover release of the book. He wanted a hardcover release because Vince Russo’s book got a hardcover release and that mad him furious and rightly so in my opinion. I was hoping that the fact that Vince Russo’s book was also an audiobook would prompt the same reaction but it wasn’t to be.

About a year ago, I contacte Audible with a content request which is something they let people do on their website. I suggested they look into the rights for ‘The Death of WCW’ and do an audiobook if they could work it out. Now, I don’t know if my note made any kind of a difference, for all I know this could have been in the works anyway. Anyway, I didn’t hear anything back from them and kind of forgot about it.

That is until Bryan Alvarez announced that an audiobook for ‘The Death of WCW’ was coming and that he was doing the narration. This was in late November of last year and may have actually been on Thanksgiving. For months I would search Audible for WCW or Bryan Alvarez to see if anything would come up, perhaps a pre-order listing. Nothing happened. Bryan and his wife had their first child in February of this year and I thought that being a new father might cut into the time he would have to work on the narration.
Every so often, Bryan would mention on a radio show that he was working on the narration. There was still no release date and no pre-order link. Then a couple of weeks ago, he mentioned that he was finished narrating the book, had completed doing the “pick-ups” and that the book should be out soon.

I still did my searches on Audible hoping for a pre-order link or something. Well, tonight on his Facebook page, Bryan announced that the book was available! I immediately went to Audible and ordered the book. I did not wait for my next audible credit to arrive early next month, I did it today because that’s how much I’ve been looking forward to this book.

I haven’t done much reading this month. Okay, I haven’t done any reading this month and I was worried that this might be the first month in years where I didn’t read at least one book. Those worries are over. I have 14 hours and 26 minuts of glorious WCW stupidity to make my way through and I was a die hard WCW fan until the bitter end.

I know it is unlikely that anyone who I am about to thank will read this but I’m going to publicly thank them anything. Thanks to Bryan Alvarez and RD Reynolds for writing the book in the first place. Thanks to ECW Press for publishing the book in the first place. Thanks to Bryan for all the time and effort he put into the narration and thanks to Audible for publishing the audiobook. I’m just one guy but the whole thing means a lot to this one guy.